Localised Arrowheads: The building blocks of elastic turbulence in rectilinear, sheared polymer flows

Fuente: arXiv
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Autores principales: Lewy, Theo A., Kerswell, Rich R.
Formato: Preprint
Publicado: 2025
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author Lewy, Theo A.
Kerswell, Rich R.
author_facet Lewy, Theo A.
Kerswell, Rich R.
contents Pressure-driven flow of a dilute polymer solution has been numerically observed to possess a form of elastic turbulence which is organised around the interactions of localised versions of 2-dimensional `arrowhead' travelling waves (Page et al. Phys. Rev. Lett. 125, 154501, 2020). As a step to confirming this theoretically, we identify spanwise-localised arrowhead travelling waves by tracking a symmetry-breaking bifurcation of the known spanwise-invariant (2D) arrowhead to a spanwise-periodic state and then discovering a secondary modulational instability to a spanwise-localised travelling wave. Spanwise-symmetric and asymmetric localised arrowheads exist with the latter having a phase speed slightly inclined to the streamwise direction. Computations capture the flow randomly switching between spanwise local and global arrowhead states in a streamwise-restricted domain, suggesting they form the building blocks of the chaos. Splitting events are also seen, in which a single localised state spawns multiple arrowheads. However, both cross-shear and spanwise velocities are small suggesting that this elastic turbulence will not be a good mixer.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2509_26168
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Localised Arrowheads: The building blocks of elastic turbulence in rectilinear, sheared polymer flows
Lewy, Theo A.
Kerswell, Rich R.
Fluid Dynamics
Pressure-driven flow of a dilute polymer solution has been numerically observed to possess a form of elastic turbulence which is organised around the interactions of localised versions of 2-dimensional `arrowhead' travelling waves (Page et al. Phys. Rev. Lett. 125, 154501, 2020). As a step to confirming this theoretically, we identify spanwise-localised arrowhead travelling waves by tracking a symmetry-breaking bifurcation of the known spanwise-invariant (2D) arrowhead to a spanwise-periodic state and then discovering a secondary modulational instability to a spanwise-localised travelling wave. Spanwise-symmetric and asymmetric localised arrowheads exist with the latter having a phase speed slightly inclined to the streamwise direction. Computations capture the flow randomly switching between spanwise local and global arrowhead states in a streamwise-restricted domain, suggesting they form the building blocks of the chaos. Splitting events are also seen, in which a single localised state spawns multiple arrowheads. However, both cross-shear and spanwise velocities are small suggesting that this elastic turbulence will not be a good mixer.
title Localised Arrowheads: The building blocks of elastic turbulence in rectilinear, sheared polymer flows
topic Fluid Dynamics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.26168